La Fabrique de l’infini Phénoménologie du désordre et genèse sensible de l’idée d’infini chez Diderot

Against the classical point of view, for which the idea of the infinite is the expression of God’s in the human being, Diderot proposes a concept of the infinite that considers it as an immediate production of the body. Removing the infinite from its former divine origin, Diderot’s idea of the sentient body contests the classical concepts, particularly the one of order, which bound epistemology to theology. Thus, disorder acquires a new value, even in its pathological forms, which now can be considered as modes of an immanent and fundamentally creative process.     

L’histoire des mathématiques de l’Antiquité

Historical research, during the last half-century, has improved our knowledge of the mathematics of Antiquity. Texts from Egypt and Mesopotamia have been better understood and their elucidation has left behind the crude alternative between empricism and rationalism. The landscape offered by Greek science grew richer and became more varied: it is no longer possible to reduce it to the sole geometrical theory. The main problems which were raised by its history have been deeply discussed. Things being so, more general questions arise, from an epistemological or philosophical point of view. Does the search into some far past of a single «birth» of mathematics make any sense? What link, if any, is there between the form of mathematics in such and such a civilization and its social structure? Can cultural anthropology help to elucidate the variety and unity of mathematics among various peoples? From what time and under what conditions is it possible for a single united historical progress of mathematics to begin?     

L’eugénisme et la protection de l’espèce humaine dans les lois bioéthiques Vers une nouvelle construction juridique de l’homme

The aim of this study is to bring to the fore some issues concerning human rights unleashed by the bioethical laws of July 1994, regarding the application of biotechnologies to reproduction. To achieve this aim, an analysis is offered of the legal arrangements, set by law in order to determine the procedures related to the selection of embryos and the transformation of their genetic characteristics. These analyses are then compared to the eugenic procedures instituted in the West during the first half of the xxth century. As a result, the idea is challenged, that eugenics is a category fit for the characterizing the biopolitical project contained in the bioethical laws. To conclude, the aim is made that what is a stake, as far as human rights are concerned, is the fate of the idea of man and of the subject of rights that is involved in these laws.     

La typologie des nations et l’Espagnol mélancolique: Notes pour l’interprétation d’un cliché

Included in the traditional typology of nations, the image of the melancholy Spaniard is a cultural stereotype which appears with a remarkable continuity since the Spanish Golden Age. Developed by foreigners--particularly by the French--this stereotype is also adopted by the Spaniards themselves. It is then necessary to inquire about the persistance of this stereotype through-out the centuries and to examine how--and why--the Spaniards did adhere to the image given by foreigners and the typology of nations. The examination of this stereotype aims at analyzing its mechanism, at discovering its representations--sometimes very different--and the implications involved. The image of the melancholy Spaniard is deeply subjective representation which engages a complex work of the imagination: it concerns the representation of the other and the consciousness that every nation has of itself, revealing many elements about the one who produces it.     

Le déplacement des pôles du théâtre francophone: Malcolm de Chazal et l’arrière-scène tibétaine

Acclaimed by the Parisian Surrealist circles in 1948, Malcolm de Chazal, the French-speaking Mauritian writer and painter, opted for unchartered literary territories in his subsequent works. In the 1950s, he wrote a collection of dramas that tended to decentre his writing practice towards Asian perspectives. References to Indo-Mauritian culture assuredly provided him with a major source of inspiration to deliver a culturally hybrid theatre. Yet Tibet may seem at first a rather unlikely referent in his work. One can nevertheless demonstrate by comparing the author’s numerous references to Tibet that it is not only meaningful in his entire work but also that it is a central and neglected aspect of his geo-literary agenda.     

Le Métier de Juriste Entre Règle de Droit et Expérience de l’Histoire

The activities of jurists, they may be judges, lawyers or university teachers, occupy a central role in the maintenance of the political and social order of modern societies. In Germany the confrontation of the recent past provoked in the early 1960’s a large debate about the real foundations of the modern state and his role in the crisis of the modernity which have been pursuit in the course of the eighties issuing in the beginning of the century in the discussions about integration and a general order of values to be recognized by everybody.     

La question de l’intériorité mentale à l’âge classique

This paper looks into the notion of mental interiority in the early-modern age and, more specifically, into the Cartesian conception of the mind as an “inner theater”. The main claim emphasizes a close connexion at work between the representative theory of the mind, associated with internalism, on the one hand, and a “neuropsychological” view on the other hand. Cartesian mentalism, in so far as it is based upon a disjunction between representation and resemblance, can therefore not be separated from the general project, already at work in the Dioptrique, of an intra-cerebral localization of the mental.     

Les sciences naturelles à l’agrégation

Demandée dès 1840 par Siméon-Denis Poisson, une agrégation spécialisée pour les sciences naturelles est créée par Victor Duruy: elle établit une triple spécialisation (sciences mathématiques, physiques, naturelles) au concours d’agrégation pour les lycées et introduit conjointement dans chacune des agrégations une composition de méthode et d’histoire des sciences dans la spécialité concernée. L’évolution de ce concours est étudiée jusqu’au milieu duxx ^e siècle. D’autres types de concours d’agrégation (agrégation de l’enseignement spécial, agrégation féminine, agrégation des facultés) ont existé où l’histoire naturelle a trouvé place.